Skip to main content
Drink

Sloe Gin

A gin infused with sloes, sugar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gin and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sloe Gin

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the sloes before adding them to the bottle.

  2. Add the gin, sugar, and cloves to the bottle.

  3. Seal the bottle and let it sit for a few weeks to infuse.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Gin + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Gin + clovetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sloes
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour as the gin extracts their juice and skin compounds.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the tartness of the sloes, balancing the finished gin.
Gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the sloes and cloves.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes that infuse into the gin over time.

The step that matters

Bruise the sloes before adding them to the bottle. Breaking the skins lets the gin reach the flesh and juice, so flavour and colour extract within weeks rather than stalling. Whole sloes release far less of their character.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gin, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gin, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes